i loved the hours
FROM THE BOOK:
You want her to come inside your head for a few days and feel the worries and
sorrows, the nameless fear. You believe ? you know ? that you and Mary Krull
suffer from the same moral sickness, the same quasiness of soul, a nd with one
more turn of the dial, you might have been friends.

FROM A FILM REVIEW:
a modern-day Mrs. Dalloway in the midst of preparing to give a party, a
middle-aged woman existentially unraveling as she questions whether she has
lost that indefinable something essential to human fulfillment. At its core,
the beautifully realized film shows us human beings confronting the prospect of
stolen lives and deciding whether to take action to alter their destinies. They
are all slipping, in one way or another, and must choose whether to catch
themselves midfall or continue in their descent. (In this regard, the film is a
bookend of sorts to the other best film of 2002, About Schmidt.) Along with the
narrative linkages to the novel Mrs. Dalloway, screenwriter David Hare (who
hands down deserves a hundred accolades for this adaptation) and director
Daldry employ a number of other inspired echoes throughout The Hours, all of
which reverberate with a pristine and fluid clarity -- the ringing of an alarm
clock, the early arrival of a guest, a passionate kiss between two women, even
the simple cracking of an egg on the rim of a bowl. What is more astounding is
how the film builds momentum and creates a sense of suspense with each
illuminating resonance, immeasurably enhanced by a Philip Glass score that
under other circumstances might be irritatingly monotonous. The triumvirate of
performances at the heart of this film is simply remarkable. In a prosthetic
nose that renders her unrecognizable, a deglamorized Kidman makes for a
strikingly memorable Woolf. Given that the writer committed suicide by placing
a large stone in her coat pocket before walking into a river and drowning in
1941, it is fitting that Kidman plays her as a woman weighed down by her
literary genius, frustrated by her inability to use that intelligence to save
herself from mental illness. Moore's portrayal of Laura is a trickier
proposition, given the character's potential for cliché and the surface
similarity of the character to her recent turn as another Fifties suburban
housewife in Far From Heaven. But the quiet desperation that we see build
within Moore's increasingly disconnected Laura is painfully real, and it's
obvious to even the staunchest of traditionalists that she is not cut out for
the life that she is living. Of the three actresses, Streep gives the most
subtle and, in many ways, the most meaningful performance as Clarissa, a
contemporary woman who anguishes about whether, in Woolf's words, she has
looked at life in the face and known it. This may be Streep's most reactive
performance yet on film -- in almost every expression, you can see all of it
slowly sinking in. In one amazing scene, Streep ruminates about how the
possibility of happiness grows more elusive as we grow older. For anyone who
has ever pondered the matter, this scene -- and Streep's rendition of it --
will surely hit home. Near-perfect in every way, The Hours is a compelling
meditation on making the most of what we're given in life. For some, it may be
too cerebral a film experience, but for those who blissfully fall into its
finely tuned modulations, The Hours is timeless.

FROM ANOTHER FILM REVIEW:
THE FILM INTERWEAVES what are essentially three miniature movies about three
women who live decades apart and who, despite mourning for something they can?t
quite name, actually have a lust for life?just not for the ones they?re living.
Kidman (with a custom-built nose) plays a suicidal Virginia Woolf, who seems to
want to live only long enough to write ?Mrs. Dalloway.? Moore is a ?50s
housewife, who wants to live only long enough to read it. And Streep plays a
modern-day Manhattanite, who seems to have actually become Mrs. Dalloway and
realizes she?s lost the thread of her life as she plans a party for a friend
with AIDS.

streep: I hope they have the reaction that I did, which is to feel the
sharpness
of experience and, you know, how wonderful living is. Even though we walk
around whining or in despair or in trouble for different reasons, I thought
about just how beautiful it is to love someone and to be in your life. The
day-to-dayness of it. The hours. I mean, that?s what I walked away with. I
thought about how exquisitely this story is poised between despair and hope.
That?s the way a lot of us feel a lot of the time?especially now.

Meryl, this particular story line must have reminded you of ?Kramer vs.
Kramer.?
Streep: I did feel the reverberation of that story, and I felt the same
way: that there are some times where you make a horrifying choice, a terrible
choice, but it?s the best choice. [To Moore] That atmosphere in that house with
the little boy and you. The silence in that house. That suburban landscape. And
that stultifying task ahead of you: your job is to make a cake, also make the
beds, also think about dinner. That?s it. Certain creatures can?t breathe in
that atmosphere. This woman is suicidal. She doesn?t have a choice.
Moore: I said to a reporter today, ?Well, do you want a dead mother or
a
mother who has left?? And the guy said to me, ?Well, it?s all the same, isn?t
it?? And I went, ?O-Kaaaay.? A dead mother, an absent mother?he saw it as
abandonment both ways. So who knows. But that?s the thing about this movie. It
presents lives. As Meryl says, it presents the intensity of life. There doesn?t
have to be a judgment about it. It simply is what it is.

FROM THE BOOK:
Here is a mother both understanding of and unnerved by her son's love for her:
''He knows. He must know. . . . He is devoted, entirely, to the observation and
deciphering of her, because without her there is no world at all. . . . He will
watch her forever. He will always know when something is wrong. He will always
know precisely when and how much she has failed.'' It is only on reflection
that we realize that the mother's fear is also a legacy, a gift to the child,
something he will always know. But reflection is where many of our chances for
happiness lie, in the memory not of what happened but of what was promised.

FROM THE BOOK:
''It had seemed like the beginning of happiness,'' the New York Clarissa thinks
of her early relationship with Richard, ''and Clarissa is still sometimes
shocked, more than 30 years later, to realize that it was happiness. . . .
There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it
seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the
moment, right then. There has been no other.''